+1

 

Sorry to hear. make a good recovery.

 

You can stop faster using the tires of your bike than laying it down and sliding across the pavement. You can also control your direction when you are still riding, so swerve to avoid impact, where you are simply skidding down the street once you lay it down. The idea that you could, or should, lay down a bike to minimize impact or injury in an unavoidable accident situation is a myth, as even if you cannot avoid impact, you can scrub off much more speed and therefore reduce injury by staying upright all the way in.

The myth was made popular by television shows and Hollywood movies showing stunt riders laying down bikes to slide under semi trucks or do other act that are next to impossible in the real world. It is often reinforced and passed on by riders that either don't know any better or have laid down their bikes in an accident and use the excuse that they had no other choice to minimize injury.

Either way, the point is that you want to avoid impact, as that is what kills you. So while staying on your bike and keeping it upright gives you the best possible chance of avoiding injury in something like 99% of motorcycle accidents, there are always those exception scenarios when your best move would have been to jump over an object you are about to impact, slide under an object, or whatever.

Still, intentionally laying down a bike is almost always a mistake.

As for the careless driving ticket. That is the standard ticket issued in single vehicle accidents, regardless of the scenario involved, as single vehicle accidents can only be attributed to two things: 1) Rider/Driver error (warrants a careless driving ticket) or 2) mechanical failure. Since mechanical failure only attributes to an extremely small percentage of accidents, cops normally just default to a careless driving ticket. Even if you had hit the car that locked up their brakes in front of you, making it a two vehicle accident, the person that rear ends the other is always at fault, since you are supposed to leave enough space between you and the car in front of you to stop if the car in front of you panic stops.

In any case, good to hear you walked away and will live to learn from your mistakes and be that much better of a rider in the future. I'm guessing this would have been much worse than a broken finger and some rashed up knees had you not been wearing so much gear.

As much as rider down threads suck for the rider that went down, they provide the rest of us with valuable information on how to avoid our own rider down threads.

 

By the way, not laying down your bike is much easier said than done, as I have found out first hand. When I rear ended a suburban once upon a time, I managed to stay up while panic stopping until about three feet before impact, when I unintentionally performed my first ever stoppie, and proceeded to lock up the front tire and go down about half a second later. It was enough to allow me to walk away with a broken shoulder blade and bumps and bruises though, so it was enough. If I had just laid it down right from the start, where I started panic braking, I doubt I would be here to talk about it, as I scrubbed something like 30-40mph before impact.

 

Da man got you down too?

 

nice post dkutin..very informative

 

repped dk